Monday, March 24, 2014

Residency Report: Can Serrat, Spain

Residency Report is an ongoing series of posts from artists undertaking creative residencies
with their families. Find out about programs that support artists with
kids, and see how other artist-parents balance the residency experience.

Christa Donner shares the experience of a dual residency with her husband, accompanied by their young daughter, at Can Serrat in Spain.

This fall my husband and I undertook a dual artist
residency with our two-year-old daughter in tow at Can Serrat, one of a handful of
international programs that supports artists with families. Unlike the residencies I'd participated in before, Can Serrat is not free: there is a
modest residency fee for each person - half off for children - and travel is not covered, so we had to seek outside funding. Our work there was supported by Faculty Enrichment Grants awarded through the college where we both teach, as well as a Support Stipend through Can Serrat itself.

Can Serrat is located in El Bruc, a tiny Catalonian village that’s about an hour’s bus ride from Barcelona, which we visited several times. The living areas, studio space, piano/performance space, and a basic printshop are all situated in a former sixteenth-century farmhouse. So it's an old building, and previous Can Serrat artists we knew described the place to us as "rustic." To parents with small children, it's important to note that this term encompasses many things, some of which are wonderful (stone arches, decorative frescos, hanging grapevines), and some of which mean keeping a close eye on the kids (crumbling masonry, stinky and loosely-covered sewer holes, clouds of mosquitoes). That said, the staff made every effort to make our time there comfortable, setting us up in the largest bedroom and even a good crib with plenty of bedding.

communal meals served outdoors in warmer weather

a shared studio space overlooking the courtyard

Residency
at Can Serrat includes breakfast and a big home-cooked dinner shared
with all the residents six nights a week. Lunches and
Sunday dinners offered time to try out local foods on our own. It can be a relief for any focused artist not to
have to think about what to make for dinner every night. For us it was even
more so, as we arrived during the height of our allergy-prone two year old’s
picky toddler phase, and Karine managed to work with that challenge, along with everyone else's culinary needs, amazingly well.

Since both of us needed studio time, we
took turns watching our daughter during the day, getting in four-hour
shifts on either
side of her midday nap and then coming together for dinner and
conversation
with our fellow residents. This wound up being more complicated than
we'd
anticipated: even after jet lag the time difference really changed
the usual sleep schedule, but after about a week we finally sorted out
a system that worked for us. The large shared studio space is divided up between residents,
and everyone meets to stake out table/wall space during the first
few days. The studio walls are all plaster, so bring a good staple gun or
plenty of
removable sticky stuff if you want to hang anything on the walls.

The unique geography around Can Serrat is part of what makes it so attractive to artists: the residency is halfway up the Montserrat
mountains, which are fascinatingly lumpy and tubular and magical to explore. You
can get dramatic views of them from anywhere in town, or make a day trip to
visit the monastery and a really great little art museum at the very top. Not surprisingly,
there’s a lot of hiking involved in El Bruc, even if you just need to get something at the
grocery store. We hadn’t thought to bring along a baby carrier for our
active two-year-old, but later wished we had: the lightweight stroller we brought wasn’t so
useful on steep gravel roads. Our daughter loved the excuse to explore and climb the hills
on foot, even if it was sometimes verrrry slow.

Christa Donner, 'Colony', gouache, ink and cut paper in two locations

The
end of the residency felt like a beginning more than a
conclusion: without the pressureto exhibit finished work, I was able to treat my
time in Spain as an exploratory research mission. I left Can
Serrat with stacks of small drawings, and a suitcase packed with field
recordings,video footage, reference images, fresh ideas and new information. This rich archive of material is now feeding much larger
multimedia projects in my Chicago studio.

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Cultural ReProducers are an evolving group of active cultural workers who are also parents. This site is for anyone interested in making the art world a more inclusive and interesting place by supporting arts professionals raising kids.